Adut Bak, center, wife of Louisville Lost Boy Benjamin Aguek, shopped for food near her home in Eldoret, Kenya. Walking with her were, from left, Aguek's brother Mauen Lual, Emmanuel Deng Maker and Achai Wol.

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Adut Bak, wife of Louisville Lost Boy Benjamin Aguek, bought meat at a shop in Eldoret, Kenya. She lives in a one-story concrete house with her mother-in-law and Aguek's brother and sister.

How we did it

Writer Katya Cengel spent two weeks in Africa reporting on Louisville's "Lost Boys," as the recipient of a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists.

Courier-Journal photographer Pam Spaulding accompanied her at the newspaper's expense.

Most conversations in Africa were obtained with the help of translators.

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Benjamin Aguek and James Deng Athian once did everything together.

In Louisville, the two Lost Boys worked the same morning shift at the GSI Commerce warehouse. They lived in the same apartment on Strawberry Lane, and in March 2002 they both applied for their African wives to join them in Louisville.

But things changed this April: Athian's wife arrived, and Aguek's did not.

Now their lives are on different tracks. Athian's wife, Achai Arop, and toddler daughter, Nyirau, live with him in a modest, one-story house off Taylorsville Road. It's a warm place, full of tablecloths, hand-stitched doilies, toys and quirky decorating touches, like lots of old cheerleading trophies.

Meanwhile, Aguek, now 25, has moved into an apartment near Iroquois Park with three other Sudanese men. The white walls in his apartment are bare, the beige carpet dirty -- and his wife, Adut Bak, is still in Africa.

The two friends' stories illustrate how completely Lost Boys' lives can depend on their success at navigating the complex requirements of U.S. immigration policy.

When the two young men were still in Africa, Aguek and Athian had done one other thing together: They had lied. Or, at least, they hadn't revealed the whole truth.

When they were selected out of the Lost Boys at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in 1999 for resettlement in the United States, they were single. But in 2000, before the process was completed, both married.

A tough choice:To tell or not to tell

"They say if you put your wife, your case will be seen later," said Athian, now 25. "So I said I wasn't married for the last interview."

So did Aguek. Both thought it was what workers with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United States government, the entities dealing with their cases, wanted to hear.

And, to a certain extent, it was. The Lost Boys resettlement program was designed for young men thought to be orphans with no family attachments.

"The whole idea of being a 'Lost Boy' is you had no relative," said Larry Yungk, a resettlement officer with the U.N. refugee agency.

But the problem was that some did -- and they had to decide whether to mention them.

"Refugees have tough decisions to make, and sometimes they make the wrong ones," Yungk said.

But Sasha Chanoff, who worked in Africa to help prepare refugees from the Kakuma camp, including the Lost Boys, for resettlement, thinks that, in situations like this, there is no right decision.

"The fact was, 30 people who told the truth (out of thousands of applicants) never got resettled," Chanoff said of the young men. "And the fact is, all the guys who lied came here and started worrying about their wives and children."

They weren't the only ones to stretch the truth. Originally several Lost Boys' cases were denied because they had older siblings at the camp, Yungk said, but their emigration was later approved after their elder siblings left the camp.

"In a way, a number of exceptions are made for refugees under U.S. law," Yungk said.

Bill Strassberger, a public-affairs officer with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, views Aguek's and Athian's marital status more as a change of circumstance than a lie.

"People's situations change all the time," Strassberger said. "That shouldn't be a problem."

There were plenty of problems ahead, however. After their own cases were settled and the two young men relocated to Louisville, they began the arduous process of trying to bring their wives to join them.

"I thought it will be easy for me to send a letter and claim her," said Aguek.

But it wasn't easy at all.

Applications and denials:living with the wait

In 2002 Athian and Aguek submitted Refugee/Asylee Relative Petition I-730s, which allow refugees and asylum-seekers to apply to bring their spouse and children within two years of their arrival.

But a year passed without their wives arriving in Louisville, so Aguek and Athian went to visit them in Kenya. They stayed with their wives in Africa, visiting for about three months. Before Athian left, he moved his wife from the Kakuma Refugee Camp to an apartment in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

Shortly after the two men returned to Louisville in fall 2003, Athian's wife was interviewed in Nairobi by a representative of the Department of Homeland Security. But her departure was delayed by the birth of their baby, Nyirau, for whom Athian had to apply for humanitarian parole -- an emergency last-resort process granted by the Department of Homeland Security.

In May 2003 she was denied access to the United States, at least partly because Aguek hadn't kept up with the paperwork. Citizenship and immigration officials had asked Aguek why he hadn't claimed his wife on his original refugee form, and Aguek failed to respond within the 30-day time limit.

In June 2004, Aguek appealed his wife's case with the help of Catholic Charities lawyer Charlie Nett. Aguek was again denied, this time for waiting too long to appeal.

In January, with the help of Kentucky Refugee Ministries and with his options for Form I-730 exhausted, Aguek submitted an Affidavit of Relationship, which allows those who came to the United States as refugees or asylum-seekers to request refugee processing for their family members.

Last month he was again denied. The reason -- his marriage was found to be inconsistent with his records. He cannot refile. His best chance now is to wait until he becomes a citizen, an approximately six- to eight-month process he can begin this spring, then apply for a Petition for Alien Relative I-130.

Herwig sees no reason why the petition wouldn't be granted. As a citizen, all Aguek has to prove is that he is married -- not that he was married before he left Africa, as the I-730 requires.

Ideally, Aguek's wife could be here in about two years.

Aguek can't explain why it took him so long to appeal his case.

Shull, of Kentucky Refugee Ministries, can only speculate as to why Aguek's wife is still in Africa and Athian's is in Louisville.

"It's bad luck, is what it really boils down to," said Shull. "And it's good luck that these young women (Athian's and another Lost Boy's wife) were able to come at all."

Strassberger, the immigrant public-affairs officer, said he cannot comment on Aguek's or any other individual case, but offered a different answer.

"No two cases are exactly identical," he said. "It sounds like more through inaction on his own part that this has dragged on so long.

"It is quite possible, if he'd responded to the request for more evidence on time, she would be here -- and they would be one happy family."

The first to say'I love you'

Outside Eldoret, Kenya, Aguek's wife, Bak, sits on a small stool, in the kitchen of her one-story concrete home. Her long legs stretch in front of her; her nimble fingers, with nails painted black, red and white, tear leaves from a plant and place them in a red pot.

She has never seen the forms her husband submitted to bring her to the United States. It wouldn't matter if she had; she cannot read. She dropped out of school in her first year to cook for her father at Kakuma.

It is a job she still performs in the house she shares with her mother-in-law, Achai Kinyang, and Aguek's brother, Mauen, 17, and sister, Adut, 15.

Although Aguek is in Louisville, his presence is everywhere in the house. Framed photos of him and his wife dominate the living room, and a photo of him hangs in his wife's room below an American flag.

Next to his wife's bed is a poster of a couple standing under a tree. A quote on it reads, "Even the wisest among us bows under the heavy weight of love."

"Benjamin was the first boy to say 'I love you,' so I stuck on him," said Bak, now 23.

Working hard onan 'African Dream'

Back in Louisville Aguek and Athian still work at the same warehouse. And they still spend time together.

But Aguek spends a lot of his time trying to make his dream come true.

Until the denial of his latest application, he called Kentucky Refugee Ministries almost daily, hoping for word about his wife. He spends hours at the library using the Internet to check news on Sudan. He takes tests online to help him study for his General Educational Development certificate, a process he has failed twice. He accumulates stacks of receipts for money he has transferred to Africa -- and "African Dream" and "Hello Africa" phone cards, which he uses to call his wife several times a week.

One Saturday afternoon in late September, he headed to Athian's for dinner.

While Arop and Maria Rec, a Sudanese woman who came to Louisville via Egypt with her husband and children, cooked in the kitchen, Aguek joined Athian and three other Sudanese men on the couch.

As the house filled with the smells of okra, beef and kisra (flat bread), the men watched football and the children ran around screaming.

Day turned to early evening. When Kevin Klaphaak and his wife, Pixie, whose Quaker meeting house sponsored several Lost Boys in 2001, stopped by to say hello, Arop eagerly practiced the English she has learned in twice-a-week classes.

"Come in, Pixie," Arop called as she placed food on the table for her American friends.

Arop served the children next. Then the men sat at the table. Arop and Rec sat in a side room filled with toys, blankets and a spare bed.

Arop sat on the bed, swinging her legs and eating a banana. She doesn't eat much these days -- she is often sick, as she was when she was pregnant with Nyirau.

Her second daughter is due in January. She hasn't decided on a name yet but has chosen the name of the son she hopes she will someday have -- Athian, after his father.

She knows that her daughters' future, and that of other sons and daughters of the conflict in Sudan, will be here, in the United States.

Last month Aguek applied for a travel document, needed by anyone who lacks a passport.

This spring he hopes to visit his wife. The trip will cost more than a thousand dollars, but he sees no other way.

If she comes and the couple are finally able to live together as man and wife, it will likely have been seven years since they got married.